The Escape Fine Crafts & Gifts | Georgetown

The Escape Fine Crafts & Gifts | Georgetown

By Suzanne Haberman Friday, 13 November 2009

GEORGETOWN — For 13 years, Len and Judy Lester have escaped the norm by owning their own business. The husband-and-wife team opened The Escape Fine Crafts & Gifts on the Square in 1996 and has been adapting the business to suit Georgetown shoppers and their personal lives ever since.

“Our success really isn’t based, I would say, financially,” Judy said. “It is more on the quality of life that it gives us.”

All of the items for sale at The Escape are handmade, and nearly all are made in the United States, Len said. Artisan crafts including earthen pottery, blown glass, wooden boxes, one-of-a-kind jewelry and decorative wall hangings fill the store displays that Len custom-designed and constructed.

In the fine crafts and gifts market where Len and Judy shop for new merchandise twice a year, The Escape Fine Crafts & Gifts has earned recognition as one of the nation’s top retailers. This summer Len and Judy attended the Buyers Market of American Craft, where they were named one of the 25 Top Retailers by NICHE magazine from a pool of 600 nominees. The Lesters’ store was the only retailer in Texas to receive the award.

Originally from West Texas, the Lesters moved to Georgetown in the early 1990s to pursue jobs in the Austin area. After two years working as an engineer designing furniture, Len decided he wanted to own his own retail shop.

“So he left engineering, and we started looking at the Square as a possibility for opening our business,” Judy said.

The store’s first location on Eighth Street opened as The Escape Artisan Gallery, and Len filled the 450 sq. ft. shop with high-end, contemporary arts and crafts, items he said did not suit Georgetown very well at the time.

Shoppers were even “so bold as to say, ‘You’ll never make it,’” Judy said. “It never bothered us.”

Two years after opening, Judy resigned from her job as a regional manager for Barnes & Noble Inc. and joined her husband. For the first several years, they lived on savings, relied on small business loans and spent all their energy building The Escape.

The couple moved to Main Street in 2002 after purchasing and renovating the 1902 Evans building, which more than tripled their original showroom space to 2,200 sq. ft. At the new location, the Lesters gained the space required to stock the range of inventory they needed to be successful.

“[Our inventory] evolved into more handmade gifts, things that had functionality as well as being handmade and beautiful,” Judy said. “We try to have functional pieces of art.”

Len and Judy changed the name of the business to The Escape Fine Crafts & Gifts to reflect their range of merchandise.

Now that The Escape is established on the Square, Len has started to make clocks, acting on a lifelong fascination. The concept behind the Howard Lester line is to “celebrate time,” Judy said. Each clock’s back panel is removable, and inside is a booklet where people can record memories. Len said he expects the clocks to be available for sale at The Escape soon.